Representatives of dozens of countries have protested against the Russian war in Ukraine by walking out of a sitting of the United Nations Human Rights Council in Geneva ahead of Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's speech.
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"The Human Rights Council must not be misused as a platform for disinformation," said German ambassador Katharina Stasch, who took part in the stunt.
"Foreign Minister Lavrov's grotesque claims must be exposed for what they are: a cynical distortion of the facts."
United Kingdom Foreign Secretary Liz Truss said Lavrov's statement was "full of disinformation" and did not deserve the attention of other members following the Ukrainian invasion.
"Russia is isolated and should be ashamed to sit in the UN chamber," she said.
Lavrov, who joined proceedings in a pre-recorded video message, read out a long statement in which he justified the attack on Ukraine by accusing the Ukrainian side of human rights violations.
He had initially planned to attend the meeting in person but the trip was cancelled because of the closure of European airspace to Russian aircraft.
The UN Human Rights Council began its regular spring session on Monday.
In his speech, Lavrov accused Ukraine of terrorising the Russian minority in Ukraine for years.
Their human rights had been violated in many ways, he claimed, adding that the US and its allies had not only looked on but supported this.
He mentioned the US, Canada and the European Union several times.
Since mid-February, more than 100,000 people have fled to Russia from Ukraine's far eastern Donbass region, where pro-Russian separatists have been fighting central government forces since 2014.
The government in Kyiv wants its own nuclear weapons, Lavrov said.
Soviet nuclear technology and the means to shoot down weapons armed in this way are still on Ukrainian territory, Lavrov said, according to the UN's English translation.
"We cannot fail to respond to this real danger," Lavrov said, while also demanding that US nuclear weapons be withdrawn from the territory of NATO partners.
"We continue to believe that a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought," Lavrov said.
Lavrov went on to say that a new arms race must be prevented.
There must be no dangerous steps in the context of military rearmament.
NATO members were ignoring this and were dragging Ukraine into the alliance's orbit by supplying it with weapons, Lavrov said.
with reporting from PA
Australian Associated Press
